Re: [Wikimedia-l] Assessing this round of FDC proposals, including the WMF's proposal
imo WMF is a mid-to-large sized IT company operating on a non-pofit basis. Whoever has _both_ the skillset (and history) of reviewing IT companies and charities, both types above 100+ employees can be considered capable of reviewing WMF as a whole. Cheers, Balazs 2014.04.25. 21:17, Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net ezt írta: Hi Risker, Thanks for your thoughts. Instead I suggest that the FDC seek authorization from the Board for an independent third party review if it feels that there is not the necessary ability for the FDC to produce its own assessment. I'm personally curious to know whether you have any suggestions of third parties that might be able to carry out this sort of review, considering the requisite knowledge of the Wikimedia movement? It might be an option worth thinking about in future years. Thanks, Mike ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive
Hei, As a supporter of language diversity, I’m a bit sad of this thread because some people find we should not engage in language revitalisation because: 1/ it’s not explicitely in our scope (and I don’t fully aggree: sum of all knowledge also includes minority cultures expressed in their languages, as shown by Hubert Laska with the Kneip), 2/ it’s too difficult/expansive to save most languages. Although there are obviously great difficulties, I find it shouldn’t stop us to support or partnership with local languages institutions, particularly if there are interested people or volunteers: we are not obliged to select the 3000 more spoken languages and set up parterships to save these 3000 languages, but we can support institutions or volunteers _interested_ in saving some small language on a case-by-case basis (Rapa Nui, Chickasaw, Skolt Sami, Kibushi, whatever) if minimum requirements are met (writing system and ISO 639 code for a website, financial ressources for a project), i.e. crowdsourcing the language preservation between Wikimedia, volunteers, speakers, and institutions. When multilinguism in the cyberspace is discussed by linguists, Wikipedia is almost every time shown as *the* better successful example. As discussed in this thread, perhaps some projects (Wikisource, Wiktionary, Wikidata) are easier to set up in these languages and this could be a first step, but these will only preserve these as non-living objects of interest, at the contrary of a Wikibook/Wikipedia/Wikinews/Wikiversity where speakers could practice the language, invent neologisms and terminology, create corpora for linguists, and show the language to other interested people in the world (I’m sure there are). As an example in France, Wikimédia France has quite good relationships with the DGLFLF (Delegation for the French language and languages of France), and this institution census 75 languages in France, whose 2/3 are overseas [1]. The DGLFLF contributed ressources on some small languages and multilinguism on Wikibooks [2] and Commons [3]. [1] (fr) http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/dglf/lgfrance/lgfrance_presentation.htm [2] (fr) https://fr.wikibooks.org/wiki/États_généraux_du_multilinguisme_dans_les_outre-mer [3] (fr)(mul) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:États_généraux_du_multilinguisme_dans_les_outre-mer ~ Seb35 20.04.2014 05:46:47 (CEST), Milos Rancic kirjoitti: There are ~6000 languages in the world and around 3000 of them have more than 10,000 speakers. That approximation has some issues, but they are compensated by the ambiguity of the opposition. Ethnologue is not the best place to find precise data about the languages and it could count as languages just close varieties of one language, but it also doesn't count some other languages. Not all of the languages with 10,000 or more speakers have positive attitude toward their languages, but there are languages with smaller number of speakers with very positive attitude toward their own language. So, that number is what we could count as the realistic final number of the language editions of Wikimedia projects. At the moment, we have less than 300 language editions. * * * There is the question: Why should we do that? The answer is clear to me: Because we can. Yes, there are maybe more specific organizations which could do that, but it's not about expertise, but about ability. Fortunately, we don't need to search for historical examples for comparisons; the Internet is good enough. I still remember infographic of the time while all of us thought that Flickr is the place for images. It turned out that the biggest repository of images is actually Facebook, which had hundred times more of them than the Twitpic at the second place, which, in turn, had hundred times more of images than Flickr. In other words, the purpose of something and general perception of its purpose is not enough for doing good job. As well as comparisons between mismanaged internet projects and mismanaged traditional scientific and educational organizations are numerous. At this point of time Wikimedia all necessary capacities -- and even a will to take that job. So, we should start doing that, finally :) * * * There is also the question: How can we do that? In short, because of Wikipedia. I announced Microgrants project of Wikimedia Serbia yesterday. To be honest, we have very low expectations. When I said to Filip that I want to have 10 active community members after the project, he said that I am overambitious. Yes, I am. But ten hours later I've got the first response and I was very positively surprised by a lot of things. The most relevant for this story is that a person from a city in Serbia proper is very enthusiastic about Wikipedia and contributing to it (and organizing contributors in the area). I didn't hear that for years! (Maybe I was just too pessimistic because of my obsession with statistics.) Keeping in mind her position (she said that she was
Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive
Seb, I agree with you 100%. We need to advertise more clearly how the current projects, without modification of scope and purpose, can be useful tools and platforms for linguists and preservationists to extend and share their work. In the US, we have had good relations with the Long Now Foundation which runs the Rosetta Project to preserve languages. On Sat, Apr 26, 2014 at 8:11 AM, Seb35 seb35wikipe...@gmail.com wrote: Hei, As a supporter of language diversity, I’m a bit sad of this thread because some people find we should not engage in language revitalisation because: 1/ it’s not explicitely in our scope (and I don’t fully aggree: sum of all knowledge also includes minority cultures expressed in their languages, as shown by Hubert Laska with the Kneip), 2/ it’s too difficult/expansive to save most languages. Although there are obviously great difficulties, I find it shouldn’t stop us to support or partnership with local languages institutions, particularly if there are interested people or volunteers: we are not obliged to select the 3000 more spoken languages and set up parterships to save these 3000 languages, but we can support institutions or volunteers _interested_ in saving some small language on a case-by-case basis (Rapa Nui, Chickasaw, Skolt Sami, Kibushi, whatever) if minimum requirements are met (writing system and ISO 639 code for a website, financial ressources for a project), i.e. crowdsourcing the language preservation between Wikimedia, volunteers, speakers, and institutions. When multilinguism in the cyberspace is discussed by linguists, Wikipedia is almost every time shown as *the* better successful example. As discussed in this thread, perhaps some projects (Wikisource, Wiktionary, Wikidata) are easier to set up in these languages and this could be a first step, but these will only preserve these as non-living objects of interest, at the contrary of a Wikibook/Wikipedia/Wikinews/Wikiversity where speakers could practice the language, invent neologisms and terminology, create corpora for linguists, and show the language to other interested people in the world (I’m sure there are). As an example in France, Wikimédia France has quite good relationships with the DGLFLF (Delegation for the French language and languages of France), and this institution census 75 languages in France, whose 2/3 are overseas [1]. The DGLFLF contributed ressources on some small languages and multilinguism on Wikibooks [2] and Commons [3]. [1] (fr) http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/dglf/lgfrance/lgfrance_presentation.htm [2] (fr) https://fr.wikibooks.org/wiki/États_généraux_du_multilinguisme_dans_les_outre-mer [3] (fr)(mul) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:États_généraux_du_multilinguisme_dans_les_outre-mer ~ Seb35 20.04.2014 05:46:47 (CEST), Milos Rancic kirjoitti: There are ~6000 languages in the world and around 3000 of them have more than 10,000 speakers. That approximation has some issues, but they are compensated by the ambiguity of the opposition. Ethnologue is not the best place to find precise data about the languages and it could count as languages just close varieties of one language, but it also doesn't count some other languages. Not all of the languages with 10,000 or more speakers have positive attitude toward their languages, but there are languages with smaller number of speakers with very positive attitude toward their own language. So, that number is what we could count as the realistic final number of the language editions of Wikimedia projects. At the moment, we have less than 300 language editions. * * * There is the question: Why should we do that? The answer is clear to me: Because we can. Yes, there are maybe more specific organizations which could do that, but it's not about expertise, but about ability. Fortunately, we don't need to search for historical examples for comparisons; the Internet is good enough. I still remember infographic of the time while all of us thought that Flickr is the place for images. It turned out that the biggest repository of images is actually Facebook, which had hundred times more of them than the Twitpic at the second place, which, in turn, had hundred times more of images than Flickr. In other words, the purpose of something and general perception of its purpose is not enough for doing good job. As well as comparisons between mismanaged internet projects and mismanaged traditional scientific and educational organizations are numerous. At this point of time Wikimedia all necessary capacities -- and even a will to take that job. So, we should start doing that, finally :) * * * There is also the question: How can we do that? In short, because of Wikipedia. I announced Microgrants project of Wikimedia Serbia yesterday. To be honest, we have very low expectations. When I said to Filip that I want to have 10 active community members after the project,
